Saturday, 24 January 2015

Free Speech and Buddhism

The recent events in Paris have stimulated a lot of discussion
regarding free speech in the press, blogs and across social networks and
the issue of whether free speech equals having the right to insult
others has been centre stage in discussion taking place in the UK. I
wanted to say a few words on the topic and look at comments that have
come from a number of Buddhist sources that I think are complicit in
calling for the suppression of free speech. It seems to me that a lot of
well-meaning folks are unable to distinguish between being nice and
being socially and politically irresponsible, demonstrating at times a
rather warped utopian view of the world which seems prevalent amongst
well-meaning western Buddhists and liberals. Some of what I write here
will be obvious to the politically informed reader, but I am writing it
nonetheless, because it turns out that a lot of folks just do not get
why a secular pluralistic society is so important and seem all to
willing to start giving up on freedom of speech.

I teach English in Italy and have spent the last week engaging
students in debate on free speech. I introduced the same questions with
high school teenagers, university students and adults, and there have
been consistent responses to the questions posed, which are more or less
as follow:

1. Do you think free speech is important? Why?

2. Should free speech ever be limited? Why?

3. Is it right to punish people for the things they say? Who should punish them?

4. Does free speech allow us to offend people? Why? Why not? Are there exceptions?

The responses were overwhelmingly uniform across age groups: 80 to 90%
of students in the courses I teach gave almost identical answers.
Question number one received a resounding yes. Number two received an
almost resounding no with just one born-again Christian saying yes.
Number three received a resounding no. When it came to number four, in
spite of the obvious contradictions; it received an almost resounding no
too.

I avoid telling students what to think. What I did do this time round
though was lead students forward in the discussion to try to highlight
the contradictions in their responses. The discussion was fruitful and
most of the students, including those who were more religious (a
minority even in Catholic Italy these days), understood the significance
of being able to offend people, even if they didn’t like it. The
discussion was interesting in great part because it seemed to show how
people, especially white middle-class Europeans, find offending others
to be almost taboo.

It seems to me that people take their ideas about how the world
should be and confuse it with how the world is and in doing so fail to
see how disallowing the act of offence would undermine the foundations
of secular society that are fundamental to pluralism and the relative
degree of freedom we currently enjoy here in the West. In discussing
free speech, we have to be very clear that we are talking about a
politically and legally sanctioned right: the fundamental basis for the
successful functioning of democracy in a secular society in which
pluralism is made possible and defended by law. The significance of free
speech is usually under-appreciated perhaps because we so often take it
as matter-of-fact in the West.

The desire to avoid offending or harming others confuses and muddies
the issue. The inability to rationally think through the consequences of
stifling criticism or satirical humour that offends is rightly
considered dangerous by many journalists and free thinkers. It seems
that for many well-meaning folks, there is an inability to separate the
ideal from the real. In the actual world we inhabit, free speech is a
safeguard against censorship and the domination of religious or
political ideologies. It has very little to do at all with being nice to
people and avoiding conflict.

Censorship driven by religion is rife and it’s not only in Muslim
countries that we see it. A modern supposedly democratic state like
Russia shows what happens when blasphemy laws exist and criticism is
condemned and punished by the state.

It is amazing how easily people fail to understand that criticism and
offence are driving forces for democratic activism, as well as a source
of creativity, social change and renewal. The universal declaration of
human rights states that freedom of expression is a fundamental right
and yet half of the world’s countries have laws suppressing free speech
and freedom of expression with dire consequences for the average
citizen. Even in democratic countries, politicians are too often
troubled by the degree to which the general public are allowed to
express themselves, which is to say that there is a constant tension
between those in power wishing to determine the limits of behaviour and
criticism, and the need to defend and secure this basic human right to
allow all discussion to take place, however unsavoury, however
offensive.

Half of the world’s countries penalise critique of religion with
horrendous consequences. Blasphemy, defamation and apostasy can be
punished by serious jail time and in a number of countries by torture
and death. In thirteen of the world’s countries, being an atheist means
you can be killed by the state: I repeat, murdered by the state for not
accepting religious orthodoxy.

The religious often forget that free speech allows for pluralism of
faiths: the fact that we in the West can convert to Buddhism and Islam
or become Hindus or Scientologists is due to this pluralism. Despite the
fact that Christianity is still fighting hard in many Western
countries, it no longer gets to shut down political discourse and change
when taking offence at the possibility of gay civil partnerships. Lest
we not forget how it fought against freely accessible contraception,
divorce, and so on, tooth and nail, with all its doctrinal powers. So
many of the freedoms we enjoy are due to the fact that secular society
has beaten back the obfuscating dominance of Christian ideology through
hundreds of years of struggles and offence to religious orthodoxy. On a
more light hearted note, if offending Christianity were illegal, there
would have never been Father Ted, George Carlin
and all the other wonderful comedians and shows that have highlighted
the madness of blind faith and archaic Christian beliefs. This stuff is
so obvious, but people do not seem to join the dots, especially if they
are well meaning folk who want everybody to just get along.

Islam is obviously the most famous of the world’s religions for the
suppression of freedom of expression at present but there are also a
number of Buddhist countries that actively suppress it too. Burma is
perhaps the most famous as the state actively suppresses religious freedom and even attempts to force conversion to Buddhism,
with Muslims getting the worst of it. In Thailand, another Buddhist
country, it is illegal to insult the Royal family and the state religion
of Buddhism with punishment there including jail time. In Sri Lanka, a
Buddhist majority country, suppression of Muslims and other faiths is
commonplace. Famously, a British backpacker was arrested there in 2014
and then expelled for having a Buddhist tattoo.
She was accused of ‘offending religious sensibilities’. Vietnam,
an-ex-Communist country, has a majority Buddhist populace and freedom of
expression is heavily clamped down on. The relationship between states
and religion and the use of religious morality in suppressing free
expression is an ongoing disaster for the cultivation of open societies
but censorship seeps into even unlikely places.

A number of contemporary Buddhist teachers cannot help but jump in on
the debate presumably holding that if we were all to practice right
speech, everything would be more peaceful and we would all be happier.
Joan Halifax recently spoke against unrestrained free speech at the
Huffington Post following the Paris murders and I think she is guilty of
failing to make a distinction between politics and benevolent practice,
not quite understanding the significance of undermining this pillar of
modern-day democracy. She also appears guilty of good old utopian new age thinking.

“I hope a warmer approach to discussing matters of faith can develop across news platforms around the globe.”

Really Joan? Really? When religion globally is too often complicit in
the suppression of free expression, it is rather difficult to have a
‘warm’ rational conversation on the topic. There are way too many cases
where faith equals conservatism, orthodoxy, and fanatical adherence to
literal readings of religious texts or reliance on highly disturbed,
manipulative religious leaders. Being all nice and warm about rampant
homophobia and the suppression of gays by almost all conservative
expressions of religion, including Buddhism, is kind of hard to swallow.
Being all nice and warm about religious backed state terrorism and
torture and even the murder of citizens for alternative beliefs is kind
of tough Joan. Let’s not forget the support Putin receives for his
anti-democratic dictatorship from the Orthodox Russian Church where
blasphemy leads to time spent in the Gulags of Siberia. Then there are
the fatwa issued on journalists and writers (with Salman Rushdie being
the most famous back in 1989). The list is long and cruel and very, very
violent. Unfortunately, she continues with this gem of wishful
thinking:

“We have engaged in — globally — a kind of
global disrespect of religious traditions, of political, of
governments, of nations and views…How do we create the conditions where a
critique — a really profound critique — can unfold in the conversation
that we’re having globally, but where people don’t feel disempowered,
disrespected?”

The answer is you can’t love. If black and white moralities lead to
state suppression, notions of right or holy speech seem too often to
lead directly to self-censorship. As Karma Yeshe Rabgye, a Western
convert to Tibetan Buddhism, states at his website in an article on speech:

“…obviously, freedom of speech is a human
right, but if you’re written words are going to harm others or stir up
trouble, that should not be written.”

Really? Who decides what is or is not trouble? What if trouble
actually needs stirring up? The problem is that such a vague statement
as ‘harm others’ or ‘stir up trouble’ can be interpreted in endless
ways. Such statements seem to assume that people will naturally arrive
at the same benevolent conclusions and that they will be able to easily
distinguish between right and wrong. Good people have been doing the
wrong thing, supporting the wrong ideology, and ignoring suffering to
avoid upsetting the apple cart since forever. Just think if Rosa Parks
and Martin Luther King had not had the courage to stir up trouble in the
States in the 1950s? What about the suffragettes in England in the
early 1900s? Perhaps they should have remained in their place and
avoided upsetting the sensibilities of a male-centred society based
around discriminative Christian values? These are two obvious examples.
The list of freedoms and justice earned by upsetting the status-quo is
very, very long.

“It is for countries that believe in the Right to Free Speech to balance this right with some censorship.”

Who gets to censor? What is censored? Why would censorship be good? Have these people read Orwell? Very scary stuff!

We have another representative of Buddhism, this time Venerable Doboom Tulku who is director of Tibet House. He stated back in 2012
during another clash of cultures with Islam due to a video that was
made that portrayed Islam in a bad light that “…freedom of expression or
intellectual exercise must never be used to hurt the sentiments of any
section” and also commented that a film which had “some content” that
“showed Islam in a bad light and should have been prevented.”

He, like many other Buddhists, seem to be of the opinion that freedom
of speech is good, but only if it adheres to strict controls, which is a
rather funny notion of freedom. This is exactly why religion needs to
be kept out of politics: all religion. Bucket loads of religious ideas
need to be undermined and deconstructed for their inaccuracies and
barbarism and when it comes to religion there really is no legislating
against disrespecting cherry picked ideas. Once you decide to avoid
upsetting feelings, the door opens to all manner of claims from all
quarters. As Bill Maher pointed out, the bullying starts. We need to be
pulling apart religious ideas that are incompatible with the facts of
the world, not pussyfooting around them so as not to offend.

The intention behind the spoken word is of course important and when
you look at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, you see a magazine
that comes out of a long history of critiquing the powerful and the
religious through satire and humour. Satire does this in great part to
destabilise what we consider as normal, as ‘just the way it is’; which
is to say, it attacks assumptions and norms, reminding us of the folly
of ideas, political certainties and religious dogma. Satire is supposed
to upset or offend, not because it has the purpose of doing so, but
because in destabilising the status quo, inevitably people’s cherished
ideas and identities are upset, are turned over and displayed under a
less adulating light. The fact is that religion has a speciality for
producing dumb ideas, as old George Carlin never failed to remind us,
and dumb ideas need not be protected and shielded from examination, but
opened up, looked at without fear, and explored without suppression.

This whole affair seems to point again to the ignorance liberal
religious and spiritual people have regarding the fundamental importance
of political engagement. It also seems to reflect complacency regarding
our history and what it is that has created a society within which
choice is possible: choices available to Muslims and Christians too. Add
to these constraints on freedom of expression adherence to right
speech, the avoidance of anger and other so-called harmful emotions, and
we have a wonderful kit for suppression and self-censorship provided by
Buddhism that perhaps accounts for the words of someone like Halifax.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who obviously has a lot of first-hand experience
with dictatorships, suppression and the removal of free expression, has
made sharp comments in defence of free speech in her native Burma. As a
political activist and Buddhist she advocates full free speech. She
speaks not of ‘right speech’ but of ‘intelligent speech’. For those of
us with some form of ongoing connection to Buddhism, intelligent speech
could form a code of conduct that is conducive to managing life more
successfully. As well as suggestions on how to manage inter-personal
communication more successfully, it would necessarily include a
commitment to truth, honesty, transparency and intelligent critique.
Intelligent speech should never seek to oppress, shout out criticism and
silence dissent in order to avoid upsetting the fragile beliefs of
others, however angry. How a voluntary ethical approach to speech can be
formulated in the 21st century is a conversation that we can certainly
have. Well-meaning Buddhists though would do well to read up on the
history of Democracy and Secularism before joining in on it.

The recent events in Paris have stimulated a lot of discussion
regarding free speech in the press, blogs and across social networks and
the issue of whether free speech equals having the right to insult
others has been centre stage in discussion taking place in the UK. I
wanted to say a few words on the topic and look at comments that have
come from a number of Buddhist sources that I think are complicit in
calling for the suppression of free speech. It seems to me that a lot of
well-meaning folks are unable to distinguish between being nice and
being socially and politically irresponsible, demonstrating at times a
rather warped utopian view of the world which seems prevalent amongst
well-meaning western Buddhists and liberals. Some of what I write here
will be obvious to the politically informed reader, but I am writing it
nonetheless, because it turns out that a lot of folks just do not get
why a secular pluralistic society is so important and seem all to
willing to start giving up on freedom of speech.

I teach English in Italy and have spent the last week engaging
students in debate on free speech. I introduced the same questions with
high school teenagers, university students and adults, and there have
been consistent responses to the questions posed, which are more or less
as follow:

1. Do you think free speech is important? Why?

2. Should free speech ever be limited? Why?

3. Is it right to punish people for the things they say? Who should punish them?

4. Does free speech allow us to offend people? Why? Why not? Are there exceptions?

The responses were overwhelmingly uniform across age groups: 80 to 90%
of students in the courses I teach gave almost identical answers.
Question number one received a resounding yes. Number two received an
almost resounding no with just one born-again Christian saying yes.
Number three received a resounding no. When it came to number four, in
spite of the obvious contradictions; it received an almost resounding no
too.

I avoid telling students what to think. What I did do this time round
though was lead students forward in the discussion to try to highlight
the contradictions in their responses. The discussion was fruitful and
most of the students, including those who were more religious (a
minority even in Catholic Italy these days), understood the significance
of being able to offend people, even if they didn’t like it. The
discussion was interesting in great part because it seemed to show how
people, especially white middle-class Europeans, find offending others
to be almost taboo.

It seems to me that people take their ideas about how the world
should be and confuse it with how the world is and in doing so fail to
see how disallowing the act of offence would undermine the foundations
of secular society that are fundamental to pluralism and the relative
degree of freedom we currently enjoy here in the West. In discussing
free speech, we have to be very clear that we are talking about a
politically and legally sanctioned right: the fundamental basis for the
successful functioning of democracy in a secular society in which
pluralism is made possible and defended by law. The significance of free
speech is usually under-appreciated perhaps because we so often take it
as matter-of-fact in the West.

The desire to avoid offending or harming others confuses and muddies
the issue. The inability to rationally think through the consequences of
stifling criticism or satirical humour that offends is rightly
considered dangerous by many journalists and free thinkers. It seems
that for many well-meaning folks, there is an inability to separate the
ideal from the real. In the actual world we inhabit, free speech is a
safeguard against censorship and the domination of religious or
political ideologies. It has very little to do at all with being nice to
people and avoiding conflict.

Censorship driven by religion is rife and it’s not only in Muslim
countries that we see it. A modern supposedly democratic state like
Russia shows what happens when blasphemy laws exist and criticism is
condemned and punished by the state.

It is amazing how easily people fail to understand that criticism and
offence are driving forces for democratic activism, as well as a source
of creativity, social change and renewal. The universal declaration of
human rights states that freedom of expression is a fundamental right
and yet half of the world’s countries have laws suppressing free speech
and freedom of expression with dire consequences for the average
citizen. Even in democratic countries, politicians are too often
troubled by the degree to which the general public are allowed to
express themselves, which is to say that there is a constant tension
between those in power wishing to determine the limits of behaviour and
criticism, and the need to defend and secure this basic human right to
allow all discussion to take place, however unsavoury, however
offensive.

Half of the world’s countries penalise critique of religion with
horrendous consequences. Blasphemy, defamation and apostasy can be
punished by serious jail time and in a number of countries by torture
and death. In thirteen of the world’s countries, being an atheist means
you can be killed by the state: I repeat, murdered by the state for not
accepting religious orthodoxy.

The religious often forget that free speech allows for pluralism of
faiths: the fact that we in the West can convert to Buddhism and Islam
or become Hindus or Scientologists is due to this pluralism. Despite the
fact that Christianity is still fighting hard in many Western
countries, it no longer gets to shut down political discourse and change
when taking offence at the possibility of gay civil partnerships. Lest
we not forget how it fought against freely accessible contraception,
divorce, and so on, tooth and nail, with all its doctrinal powers. So
many of the freedoms we enjoy are due to the fact that secular society
has beaten back the obfuscating dominance of Christian ideology through
hundreds of years of struggles and offence to religious orthodoxy. On a
more light hearted note, if offending Christianity were illegal, there
would have never been Father Ted, George Carlin
and all the other wonderful comedians and shows that have highlighted
the madness of blind faith and archaic Christian beliefs. This stuff is
so obvious, but people do not seem to join the dots, especially if they
are well meaning folk who want everybody to just get along.

Islam is obviously the most famous of the world’s religions for the
suppression of freedom of expression at present but there are also a
number of Buddhist countries that actively suppress it too. Burma is
perhaps the most famous as the state actively suppresses religious freedom and even attempts to force conversion to Buddhism,
with Muslims getting the worst of it. In Thailand, another Buddhist
country, it is illegal to insult the Royal family and the state religion
of Buddhism with punishment there including jail time. In Sri Lanka, a
Buddhist majority country, suppression of Muslims and other faiths is
commonplace. Famously, a British backpacker was arrested there in 2014
and then expelled for having a Buddhist tattoo.
She was accused of ‘offending religious sensibilities’. Vietnam,
an-ex-Communist country, has a majority Buddhist populace and freedom of
expression is heavily clamped down on. The relationship between states
and religion and the use of religious morality in suppressing free
expression is an ongoing disaster for the cultivation of open societies
but censorship seeps into even unlikely places.

A number of contemporary Buddhist teachers cannot help but jump in on
the debate presumably holding that if we were all to practice right
speech, everything would be more peaceful and we would all be happier.
Joan Halifax recently spoke against unrestrained free speech at the
Huffington Post following the Paris murders and I think she is guilty of
failing to make a distinction between politics and benevolent practice,
not quite understanding the significance of undermining this pillar of
modern-day democracy. She also appears guilty of good old utopian new age thinking.

“I hope a warmer approach to discussing matters of faith can develop across news platforms around the globe.”

Really Joan? Really? When religion globally is too often complicit in
the suppression of free expression, it is rather difficult to have a
‘warm’ rational conversation on the topic. There are way too many cases
where faith equals conservatism, orthodoxy, and fanatical adherence to
literal readings of religious texts or reliance on highly disturbed,
manipulative religious leaders. Being all nice and warm about rampant
homophobia and the suppression of gays by almost all conservative
expressions of religion, including Buddhism, is kind of hard to swallow.
Being all nice and warm about religious backed state terrorism and
torture and even the murder of citizens for alternative beliefs is kind
of tough Joan. Let’s not forget the support Putin receives for his
anti-democratic dictatorship from the Orthodox Russian Church where
blasphemy leads to time spent in the Gulags of Siberia. Then there are
the fatwa issued on journalists and writers (with Salman Rushdie being
the most famous back in 1989). The list is long and cruel and very, very
violent. Unfortunately, she continues with this gem of wishful
thinking:

“We have engaged in — globally — a kind of
global disrespect of religious traditions, of political, of
governments, of nations and views…How do we create the conditions where a
critique — a really profound critique — can unfold in the conversation
that we’re having globally, but where people don’t feel disempowered,
disrespected?”

The answer is you can’t love. If black and white moralities lead to
state suppression, notions of right or holy speech seem too often to
lead directly to self-censorship. As Karma Yeshe Rabgye, a Western
convert to Tibetan Buddhism, states at his website in an article on speech:

“…obviously, freedom of speech is a human
right, but if you’re written words are going to harm others or stir up
trouble, that should not be written.”

Really? Who decides what is or is not trouble? What if trouble
actually needs stirring up? The problem is that such a vague statement
as ‘harm others’ or ‘stir up trouble’ can be interpreted in endless
ways. Such statements seem to assume that people will naturally arrive
at the same benevolent conclusions and that they will be able to easily
distinguish between right and wrong. Good people have been doing the
wrong thing, supporting the wrong ideology, and ignoring suffering to
avoid upsetting the apple cart since forever. Just think if Rosa Parks
and Martin Luther King had not had the courage to stir up trouble in the
States in the 1950s? What about the suffragettes in England in the
early 1900s? Perhaps they should have remained in their place and
avoided upsetting the sensibilities of a male-centred society based
around discriminative Christian values? These are two obvious examples.
The list of freedoms and justice earned by upsetting the status-quo is
very, very long.

“It is for countries that believe in the Right to Free Speech to balance this right with some censorship.”

Who gets to censor? What is censored? Why would censorship be good? Have these people read Orwell? Very scary stuff!

We have another representative of Buddhism, this time Venerable Doboom Tulku who is director of Tibet House. He stated back in 2012
during another clash of cultures with Islam due to a video that was
made that portrayed Islam in a bad light that “…freedom of expression or
intellectual exercise must never be used to hurt the sentiments of any
section” and also commented that a film which had “some content” that
“showed Islam in a bad light and should have been prevented.”

He, like many other Buddhists, seem to be of the opinion that freedom
of speech is good, but only if it adheres to strict controls, which is a
rather funny notion of freedom. This is exactly why religion needs to
be kept out of politics: all religion. Bucket loads of religious ideas
need to be undermined and deconstructed for their inaccuracies and
barbarism and when it comes to religion there really is no legislating
against disrespecting cherry picked ideas. Once you decide to avoid
upsetting feelings, the door opens to all manner of claims from all
quarters. As Bill Maher pointed out, the bullying starts. We need to be
pulling apart religious ideas that are incompatible with the facts of
the world, not pussyfooting around them so as not to offend.

The intention behind the spoken word is of course important and when
you look at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, you see a magazine
that comes out of a long history of critiquing the powerful and the
religious through satire and humour. Satire does this in great part to
destabilise what we consider as normal, as ‘just the way it is’; which
is to say, it attacks assumptions and norms, reminding us of the folly
of ideas, political certainties and religious dogma. Satire is supposed
to upset or offend, not because it has the purpose of doing so, but
because in destabilising the status quo, inevitably people’s cherished
ideas and identities are upset, are turned over and displayed under a
less adulating light. The fact is that religion has a speciality for
producing dumb ideas, as old George Carlin never failed to remind us,
and dumb ideas need not be protected and shielded from examination, but
opened up, looked at without fear, and explored without suppression.

This whole affair seems to point again to the ignorance liberal
religious and spiritual people have regarding the fundamental importance
of political engagement. It also seems to reflect complacency regarding
our history and what it is that has created a society within which
choice is possible: choices available to Muslims and Christians too. Add
to these constraints on freedom of expression adherence to right
speech, the avoidance of anger and other so-called harmful emotions, and
we have a wonderful kit for suppression and self-censorship provided by
Buddhism that perhaps accounts for the words of someone like Halifax.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who obviously has a lot of first-hand experience
with dictatorships, suppression and the removal of free expression, has
made sharp comments in defence of free speech in her native Burma. As a
political activist and Buddhist she advocates full free speech. She
speaks not of ‘right speech’ but of ‘intelligent speech’. For those of
us with some form of ongoing connection to Buddhism, intelligent speech
could form a code of conduct that is conducive to managing life more
successfully. As well as suggestions on how to manage inter-personal
communication more successfully, it would necessarily include a
commitment to truth, honesty, transparency and intelligent critique.
Intelligent speech should never seek to oppress, shout out criticism and
silence dissent in order to avoid upsetting the fragile beliefs of
others, however angry. How a voluntary ethical approach to speech can be
formulated in the 21st century is a conversation that we can certainly
have. Well-meaning Buddhists though would do well to read up on the
history of Democracy and Secularism before joining in on it.

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About Me

I'm a Life Coach, Core Shamanic Counsellor and meditation teacher to boot. I also teach English in Trieste, Italy. I follow a non-traditional expression of Buddhism and also run occasional events over the border from Trieste in Slovenia on Shamanism. Email me if you're curious about any of these activities.

Benvenuti (welcome)

This blog started out as an experiment. It continues to be such to this day. The opinions you will find in these pages are my own, and like all material on this Earth, are subject to change due to that hidden factor of impermanence.

This blog started out as an experiment. Writing is an art and one which I am only now starting to develop any capacity in. All of my writing constitutes a learning process in the presentation of ideas, opinions and experience. I am no expert, but I am doing my best to develop and learn from each piece I publish.

This blog started out as an experiment. I've no idea where it will end up. I explore Buddhist and Shamanic themes in this blog. Both areas which interest a fairly small percentage of Western society. Therefore this blog is quite specialist. It goes one step further by not representing any particular tradition in either of these spiritual arenas, although I have grounding in two shamanic worlds; one a path, the other an approach to counselling. My experience of Buddhism is primarily within the Tibetan and Theravada traditions.